Brendan Jones, the author of The Alaskan Laundry, offers a piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer about his life in Philadelphia and Alaska.
There was no way of knowing that the dark-haired woman I met eyes with in my Cuban salsa class in Sitka, Alaska, was from Mount Laurel. That she was born at Holy Redeemer in Philadelphia. That we would be married a couple of years later, living on a World War II tugboat in Sitka, the two of us holding our daughter Haley Marie over the training potty emblazoned with the Dallas Cowboys star. Good job, Sweetie. Good job.
I grew up on 20th and Lombard, and went to school in the city. At age 19, I traveled to Alaska to work at a salmon hatchery, lived in the woods for nine months, had my life transformed by that fishing village on the edge of a rain forest, a town where brown bears outnumber kids.
It's bizarre, negotiating my love for this city with our life in Alaska. This has become even more complicated when it comes to raising Haley Marie, who pulls herself up in the morning on the threaded rods of the brass porthole to look out over the water. Who stares down sea otters and growls back at Earl, the harbor sea lion. Who witnessed her first deer butchered at 8 months (don't tell Rachel's mother) and whose small fists excel at gutting fish.
... But we also want her to have that Philly/Jerz panache, to make sure that the 215/856 blood she inherits flows strong in her veins.
You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:
Note: I've been assigned by the Philadelphia Inquirer to review Brendan Jones' The Alaska Laundry. I'll post the link to the review on the website when it is published.
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